He waited, and listened anxiously. The time passed, and no sound reached him. He still listened, with a growing distrust of the darkness. Another moment, and there came a sound from the invisible shore. Far and faint from the beach below, a long cry moaned through the silence. Then all was still once more.
In sudden alarm, he stepped forward to descend to the beach, and to call to her. Before he could cross the path, footsteps rapidly advancing caught his ear. He waited an instant, and the figure of a man passed quickly along the walk between him and the sea. It was too dark to discern anything of the stranger’s face; it was only possible to see that he was a tall man—as tall as that officer in the merchant-service whose name was Kirke.
The figure passed on northward, and was instantly lost to view. Captain Wragge crossed the path, and, advancing a few steps down the beach, stopped and listened again. The crash of footsteps on the shingle caught his ear once more. Slowly, as the sound had left him, that sound now came back. He called, to guide her to him. She came on till he could just see her—a shadow ascending the shingly slope, and growing out of the blackness of the night.
“You alarmed me,” he whispered, nervously. “I was afraid something had happened. I heard you cry out as if you were in pain.”
“Did you?” she said, carelessly. “I was in pain. It doesn’t matter—it’s over now.”
Her hand mechanically swung something to and fro as she answered him. It was the little white silk bag which she had always kept hidden in her bosom up to this time. One of the relics which it held—one of the relics which she had not had the heart to part with before—was gone from its keeping forever. Alone, on a strange shore, she had torn from her the fondest of her virgin memories, the dearest of her virgin hopes. Alone, on a strange shore, she had taken the lock of Frank’s hair from its once-treasured place, and had cast it away from her to the sea and the night.
CHAPTER II.
The tall man who had passed Captain Wragge in the dark proceeded rapidly along the public walk, struck off across a little waste patch of ground, and entered the open door of the Aldborough Hotel. The light in the passage, falling full on his face as he passed it, proved the truth of Captain Wragge’s surmise, and showed the stranger to be Mr. Kirke, of the merchant service.
Meeting the landlord in the passage, Mr. Kirke nodded to him with the familiarity of an old customer. “Have you got the paper?” he asked; “I want to look at the visitors’ list.”
“I have got it in my room, sir,” said the landlord, leading the way into a parlor at the back of the house. “Are there any friends of yours staying here, do you think?”